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Entourage: eDGe more comfortable for reading than iPad

updated 04:30 pm EST, Fri February 26, 2010

by MacNN Staff

eDGe delays simplified, to offer 16-hour reading

More information has been gleaned about the Entourage eDGe we had a chance to play with at CES thanks to an interview with the company's President and CEO as well as the VP of Marketing. Speaking to E-ReaderInfo, President Asghar Mostafa and Doug Atkinson have revealed that their device, which has both an E-Ink screen and a traditional LCD, has a 16-hour battery life when operating with the paper screen itself.

When both the LCD and E-ink screen are used in conjunction, or the LCD itself, battery life is set at 6 hours, Atkinson said. This, and the E-Ink display's nature, makes reading on the eDGe much easier than of comparable products, such as Apple's iPad, which exclusively offers an LCD screen.

Atkinson also clarified that the recent delay will have any new orders for the eDGe shipping in March, with those placed by January 12th shipping today.

... because he is simply claiming that an E ink screen is easier on the eye than an LCD screen while not actually spelling that out quite that clearly. Of course what he isn't saying is that factor only applies to straightforward black and white books like novels. Anything that we are used to in colour or has, or could potentially have interactive elements will be an inferior experience either through having to view in that form factor or give you a poor battery life while getting a similar experience to the iPad (at best). As simple black and white content will rapidly go the same way as B&W tvs and the other disadvantages of this siamese approach this at best is going to be a dead end approach.

I cannot believe that people are falling for all of the hype. The reason why E-Ink is considered more comfortable for reading is because it "requires" sufficient ambient light. If you were to offer sufficient ambient light, set your iPhone brightness to around 25% would would get similar readability.

The reason why people suffer from eye strain from reading on LCD is the same reason why people suffer eye strain from reading paper books in dim light. People assume that because an LCD is backlit that they can get away with no ambient light and this results in eye strain.

This whole idea of making an eBook fold open like a book... I've seen this before in mockups and concept presentations, and it looks like a horrible idea. Make the device more complex, less reliable, easier to break, and bigger and bulkier in your hand... for what? To pick up an extra 10 sales from people who are too stupid to realize that the reason books fold open is because they have to, not because it's something you actually want to have to deal with?

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Twitter stickers slowly roll out to users

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